1) Schedule Conflicts: This is the most cold, impersonal reason. I work 3rd shift and most of my friends work 1st with copious overtime. One of my friends commutes an hour to work — each way. Mix that in with family events and other interests and we’ve had precious little time for RPGs.

2) Disruptive Characters: I love campaign settings that give players freedom to make exactly the sort of characters they want to play. However, at least two persons in my current group have proven that, given the freedom, they don’t always make characters that are balanced or willing to fit into a group.

3) Disruptive Players: One of the above players has proven so lethal to my campaigns lately that, for the time being, I’ve pretty much given up on GMing for now. If you what a ‘munchkin’ is you’ll know why. I honestly think his job has ‘corporatized’ him to the point where he’s lost his sense of fair play. On a side note, I haven’t talked to this friend now in over a month and my other friends are either excluding him as well, or have the sense to keep both of us out of the same activity.

4) Creative Fatigue: There is a finite point in time where I know that whatever mental mechanism fuels my creativity broke down and never fully recovered. It was after my second, completely original game setting failed. It’s still an acute source of angst for me, and I think the wound of it’s failure still weighs on me. I love the setting so much that I’ve been resurrecting it on and off in personal projects ever since, currently in the form of a homemade miniatures space combat game.

5) Lack of Discipline: As a GM, I have a hard time enforcing discipline, and consistently it’s hurt my games. I suppose it came (and continues to come, perhaps) from a naieve belief that, all things being equal, a group of people who are considerate can be given free reign without fear of, well, the above reasons. And I suppose I still believe it’s still essentially possible, so perhaps this one is less a regret and more of an optimism.